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AI startup OpenICS is raising a new round of capital from Sequoia to expand its chatbot doctors.
The new $75 million cash injection has not been reported before and is estimated at $1 billion, the two companies told CNBC.
Daniel Nadler founded OpenIvence in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He previously founded Kensho Technologies, a Wall Street-focused AI company that sold to Standard & Poor for $700 million in 2018.
Nadler’s latest AI Venture is a doctor’s chatbot that can help them make better decisions during their care period. The company claims it has been used by one in four doctors in the United States
Nadler raised a tour with friends and family in 2023 after selling Kensho in 2021. Sequoia’s funding represents the first round led by institutional investors and raises the company’s total to more than $100 million.
OpenWivence said the company will also use the funds to build strategic content partnerships. In addition to funding, OpenIvence announced that the New England Journal of Medicine has become a content partner, meaning clinicians using open prequels can benefit from content in NEJM Group journals.
The founders describe open communication as an AI co-pilot. Nadler said while the experience may be similar to chatgpt, the open prequel is a “very different creature” due to the data being trained.
“The fact that medical trust is trained in the New England Journal of Medicine is a fact built for doctors – the result is a black-and-white difference in accuracy,” Nadler told CNBC.
Nadler said the company signed a license agreement with peer-reviewed medical journals, and OpenIvence’s model is not connected to the public internet while being trained. Using tailored data helps avoid the trap of “illusion”, a phenomenon in which AI can produce inaccurate and sometimes meaningless answers.
Openivence offers chatbots for free and earns money from ads. Nadler said the product has been grown organically due to word of mouth among doctors.
“Doctors are very close to each other, especially on the floor of the hospital,” he said. “When a doctor takes out an iPhone to look at something, other doctors can see it. Their natural problem is, ‘That’s it What?'”
The organic growth level is an attractive factor in Pat Grady, a partner in Sequoia who leads the company’s investment. Sequoia is famous for its early days invest in NVIDIA, Apple, YouTube, Stripe, SpaceX and Airbnb.
“It’s a consumer internet company disguised as a healthcare business,” Grady told CNBC. “It sticks with it when they have a few good experiences.” There aren’t many products in healthcare that can be adopted like consumer internet companies. ”
The open prequel is the latest in the Silicon Valley AI transaction.
According to CB Insights, the booming industry accounts for a quarter of the venture capital raised by startups. Healthcare is a high-potential area for applying AI. Investors and founders have seen the technology’s ability to sift through large amounts of data and its possibility of transitioning from drug discovery to medical care Imaging.
“There are a lot of great ideas in healthcare, but it’s a complex system,” Grady said. “It’s really hard to cut one layer in one layer.”
Although AI has the potential to make medical breakthroughs, there are also concerns about risks. Industry leaders expressed concern about the “apocalypse” scheme, in which the technology leads to catastrophic results for humanity, while on a smaller scale, others fear work displacement.
Openivence’s Nadler said he believes healthcare use cases are antidotes and represents the upward potential of AI. He stressed the doctor’s burnout and predict By the end of this decade, there was a shortage of nearly 100,000 physicians.
“Now everyone is thinking about a big question, is AI actually good for humans?” Nadler said. “I think it’s good.”
